Time to Write

If Your Writing Isn't Going So Well

If things are going great for you and your writing, maybe this message won’t be relevant. For the rest, I just wanted to share three thoughts that might be helpful. Although writing is still my main activity, lately I’ve also been getting involved in a new arena and here’s what it has brought up:

1. As romantic or brave as it sounds to be a risk-taker and to operate outside your comfort zone with new activities…it’s uncomfortable and feels risky! That may seem like a “doh!” insight, but my point is simply that the abstract principle and the reality are different. If you’re in that reality and feeling insecure…well, that’s how we’re supposed to be feeling.

2. When things don’t go smoothly, it’s important to keep a larger perspective. Here’s an example: your manuscript comes back from yet another publisher. Short-term perspective: failure. Longer-term perspective: when I finally find a publisher, the number of rejections I had before succeeding will make a good story.

3. It helps to look for the win within the loss. For instance, if your work is rejected but you get a constructive comment, that’s a win. It may give you an idea for how to improve your manuscript, and it may give you a potential contact to which to submit your next project.

OK, now I’m going back to feeling risky and insecure...

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She Did It Herself (so can you...)

Self-publishing has paid off for psychotherapist Jane Haynes. Who Is It Who Can Tell Me Who I Am? The Journal of a Psychotherapist was also published as an e-book, and now has been short-listed for the autobiography award, the Pen/Ackerley Prize.

Director of English PEN, Jonathan Heawood, commented that this reflects "the changes in contemporary publishing."

It's a boost for people who are considering self-publishing but worried about the now out-of-date idea that it's only for works not good enough to find a traditional publisher.

(For lots of clever ideas about creativity and productivity, subscribe now to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to: [email protected].)

If You Like Writing or Reading Short Stories...

Yesterday I mentioned Nathaniel Rich’s promotional gimmick for his novel.
If you want to read a sample of his writing, a five-part short story Rich wrote, called Trainchasers, is up at FiveChapters.com . It’s an interesting site. Here’s what they say about themselves:

FiveChapters.com is the home of the most exciting original fiction on the web. A five-part story will be published every week, serial-style, beginning on Monday and with a new installment every weekday. The editor of FiveChapters.com is David Daley. David curated the 20-Minute Fiction in issue 12 of McSweeney's, created the Tag-team Fiction series for The Journal News, and is the former features editor of Details magazine. To submit a story to FiveChapters.com, join the mailing list, or to inquire about advertising, email editor(at)fivechapters.com.

If you’re a short story writer yourself, you might want to submit a story of your own.

(For lots of clever ideas about creativity and productivity, subscribe now to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to: [email protected].)

A Unique Writer's Promotion

. Author Nat Rich has come up with a fun way to involve readers on this website. His novel, “The Mayor’s Tongue,” features the fictional novelist Constance Eakins, and Rich invites web visitors to come up with covers for each of Eakin’s supposed books. The titles include The Saddest Man and Other Stories, The Turnipseed and the Anger, Tobin the Lesser, Better Days Will Haunt You, The Darkness and the Devil, and The Slayed, The Slaying, and The Slaughter.

Obviously there are people out there with a lot of time on their hands, because it looks like several people have done this. It’s a fun idea and a good promotional tool. You can read more and find the link to the covers here.

(For lots of clever ideas about creativity and productivity, subscribe now to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to: [email protected].)

Selling Your Writing: The Personalizing Strategy

There's a new approach to travel guides in the form of Just Go Guides. They allow the reader to request the categories of information they want and download it for free to their iPod, phone, or laptop--or they can have a book version for £15 ($30). They can also submit feedback on their own travel experiences via text message, and that will be integrated into the listings (for example, if a hotel is undergoing a lot of construction work, that information could instantly be added).

It's an experiment that could be adopted by other writers in the non-fiction realm. It will be interesting to see whether enough people pay for the books to cover the expenses of providing the free content--a big question that hangs over the digital world in general.

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Clever Strategy for Book Authors (fiction or non-fiction)

On his Publishing Spot blog, Jason Boog did one of his five questions mini-interviews with prolific author Duane Swierczynski. Duane talked about placing one of his books (about drinks):

"For my Perfect Drink pitch, though, I did work hard to give a feel for the resulting book, with sample pages and an enthusiastic pitch. This was a hard sell--every publishing company and their grandmothers have a dozen drink books on the backlist already. But I lucked out because Quirk was a new publisher, with no backlist; hence, no dozen drink books on their backlist."

There's a great strategy for writers in that quote: always be on the look-out for enterprises that are just getting started. It could be, as in this case, a publishing house, or an agency, or a magazine or newspaper. That's when they will be most receptive. I've mentioned before that my newest book, Focus: the Power of Targeted Thinking, came about when I read that Pearson had a new line of self-development book. I pitched it to them, and it hits the shops next week. They've also offered me a contract to do another book for them. So it pays to pay attention!

(For tips and techniques for being more creative and productive, subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin--just send an email request to [email protected].)

Advice on Email--and a message for agents, producers, etc.

Randall Stross wrote an article in the New York Times on how to handle email. It also contains a message for agents, producers and others who fail to even acknowledge letters or emails. Here's an excerpt:

"We all can learn from H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), the journalist and essayist, who was another member of the Hundred Thousand Letters Club, yet unlike Edison, corresponded without an amanuensis. His letters were exceptional not only in quantity, but in quality: witty gems that the recipients treasured.

"...In his correspondence, Mencken adhered to the most basic of social principles: reciprocity. If someone wrote to him, he believed writing back was, in his words, “only decent politeness.” He reasoned that if it were he who had initiated correspondence, he would expect the same courtesy. 'If I write to a man on any proper business and he fails to answer me at once, I set him down as a boor and an ass.' "

Stoss adds: "Today’s advice from time-management specialists, to keep our e-mail software off, except for twice-a-day checks, replicates the cadence of twice-a-day postal deliveries in Mencken’s time."

Clever Video Book Trailer

I've linked to a few videos created by authors to promote their books, and I like this one by Janice Taylor for her diet book, "All is Forgiven, Move On." As you'll see, it doesn't try to disguise its amateur origins and has fun along the way. The one thing I'd suggest if you want to do anything like this is to use a shotgun or lapel microphone to get rid of the echoey sound (I've learned his the hard way, as you can tell from some of the earlier videos on my sites).

(For tips and techniques for being more creative and productive, subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin--just send an email request to [email protected])

Creativity and Mood Disorders

There is a theory that many artists and writers have suffered from bi-polar disorder--having manic periods of creativity, followed by periods of severe depression. It has even been suggested that having a very mild case of this disorder can be an advantage, if you can have your ideas during the manic phase and then do the less exciting job of turning them into reality during the subdued periods. However, for many people this disorder is a serious illness, and I was interested to run across one such person. Her name is Therese Borchard and her blog is "Beyond Blue."

In the video, she talks about hearing author Kay Redfield Jamison discuss this issue and adds her own very personal perspective on the disorder and whether or not treatment affects creativity.

(For tips and techniques for being more creative and productive, subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin--just send an email request to [email protected])

Where Your Next Story is Hiding

In an article in the RepublicanAmerican, Brynn Mandel writes about John Fusco, author of the film, “The Forbidden Kingdom.” The article says Fusco credits his screenwriting success — "Young Guns" and "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" are among 10 he's written— with his determination to reconnect with the wonder and excitement of childhood.

“The Forbidden Kingdom” came from a bedtime story Fusco told his son, based on the Chinese legend of the Monkey King and a magical staff. In his version, an American teen-ager finds in a pawnshop a special weapon belonging to a Chinese sage, and it transports him to ancient China.

"It all goes back to this creative well that was established in my younger years," Fusco said.

I don’t know how good the film is but the principle of going back to what inspired you as a child, rather than being unduly influenced by other current films and novels, is a great one.

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"Based on a True Story" Movies: A very funny video (and not far off the truth...)

I didn't realize until today that the satirical newspaper, The Onion, also produced satirical videos, but they do, and this one is a hilarious look at the based-on-reality movie. Sadly it's not far off the truth, either.

Click HERE to see it.

Added Value from Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs' new audio book, "A Wolf at the Table," departs from the traditional format by offerings some extras, namely four new songs composed by his favorite indie musicians, including Patti Smith and Ingrid Michaelson. He says he wanted it to be more like a film or a 1950's radio show, with sound effects and music to help create the atmosphere of the story.

It reflects the fact that these days it helps to add some value to a traditional product. You can watch the video of Augusten Burroughs describing how he created the audio book and a bit about his writing process here.

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Picasso has a Message for You

On The Positivity Blog I found a post about Picasso’s Top 7 Tips for Creating an Exciting Life. Below are some of the artist’s quotes that are featured there. Check whether one of these speaks to your current situation:

“He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”

“Youth has no age.”

(As today is my birthday, that last one has a lot of appeal...)

Attack on the Character Arc

In the context of explaining why he didn’t go see the Iraq war movie, “Stop Loss,” Weekly Standard critic John Podheretz had this little rant about the the character arc, a feature of ‘Screenwriting 101’:

“It's only Screenwriting 101 over the past couple of decades. It's a perversion of the classic principle of fiction, which is that people are changed by experience. That doesn't mean people automatically grow from experience, or get better through experience, or become wiser, or become more enlightened. It just means that they are affected by what happens to them. In what passes for serious filmmaking in Hollywood, this change always occurs on a straight line. It is always for the better, and "better," in these instances, means that its lead character or characters start out as unthinking cogs in a status-quo machine and then, following a few dark lessons in the nature of evil (as represented by corporations or a Republican-led government), emerge from their cocoons to write angry and passionate blog items for the Huffington Post. Or the equivalent.”

Of course there have also been films showing someone going on a downward spiral--but they are very hard to sell, and in many hands that kind of journey is just as simplistic as the 'happily ever after' version.

Perhaps because of their longer history, its European countries that tend to produce films with a more sophisticated view of change. Maybe America's current events will eventually give it that greater perspective as well.

The Party Approach

On her “Pencil Shavings” blog, Latina author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez writes about what works and doesn’t work for promoting her novels:

"Again and again, I found that the only media my readers ever mentioned in conjunction with having heard about my books was Latina magazine …A few saw me on The Today Show. The rest? The rest heard about me from their sisters in their Latina sorority, or from a Latina pal at work, or from their Latina sisters, mothers, aunts, daughters and, yes, even from their grannies. It was a sister-to-sister grassroots network that was selling my books—and one that I believe requires a grassroots approach to marketing to be effective."

She said that New Yorker ads, Kirkus reviews, and even New York Times features have not had much effect on her sales. So to reach her core audience, she’s planning to throw a party for the release of her novel, “Dirty Girls on Top” (which is a sequel to “The Dirty Girls Social Club.”) Make that a lot of parties. Two hundred and fifty of them:

"Why not bring the books into women's homes, where other women can come? And why not get sponsors to donate gifts and goodies? And why not raffle off a fabulous trip to a resort for the hosts?"

How did her publisher (St. Martin’s Press) react to this innovative idea? Negatively, because it’s never been done before. But she’s going ahead and hopes to have most of the parties take place the weekend of July 11-13. The prize is a weekend for two at the Fairmont Princess Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, including airfare and brunch with the author.

She plans to support the parties with a mini-reading from her book and to connect to the parties via webcam.

It’s a creative approach—obviously made easier by the fact that this book is a sequel to one that’s already been a best-seller. But if your book (fiction or non-fiction) has a clearly defined audience that you can reach through websites, a version of this could work for you, too. For more on how her parties are being set up, click here.